


Tired Never Looked So Good

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Implied Relationships, M/M, Post-Hell Sam, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2626586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the simple things that Dean learned to appreciate about Sam once he had his soul back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tired Never Looked So Good

Sam squirmed—actually _squirmed_ —in the seat, rolled his shoulders, then his head first one way and then the other. He shifted to lean against the door, and then to throw one arm over the seat back. Dean scowled out of the corner of his eye.

“Dude…you got ants in your pants, or what?”

Sam sighed heavily and pinched at the inside corners of his eyes, rubbing them with finger and thumb. His muscles were twitchy and his guts were all jittery, and he did feel like he had ants crawling under his skin, but it was the kind of fidgety that came with being so exhausted that any lack of movement would bring sleeping crashing in on him.

They’d both been awake for almost a straight forty-eight hours and were coming down off the adrenaline rush of a successful hunt, though the solution had forced them to grab their gear and leg it before the local law enforcement caught wind of what had gone down. Dean wanted to get them across the state line before they stopped for the night, and Sam would be damned if he fell asleep to leave Dean doing all the driving by himself when he was just as exhausted. 

“’M fine. Just…” he pressed his legs forward, trying unsuccessfully to straighten them and relieve the itch under his kneecaps. He let out a frustrated sigh. “Just…tired.”

He glanced ruefully at Dean, fully expecting an eye roll or a snort, but Dean’s face went surprisingly soft. He nodded slowly, an oddly serious and almost relieved expression on his face. 

“Just a little farther, Sam. State line’s only about ten minutes away.” Dean looked back over at him, concern now etching his brow which made Sam squirm for different reasons. “Why don’t you just put your head back and sleep. I’ll wake you when we get someplace.”

Sam shook his head. “Because you’ll drive all through the night to get back to Bobby’s if I do, and besides…you’re just as tired as I am.” 

Probably more, he thought. It hadn’t failed to catch his attention how Dean was staying awake at night until Sam’s eyes were too heavy to prop open any longer, and he was up before Sam, usually with breakfast and coffee on the nightstand to greet him when he finally managed to drag his lids back up; and that was odd, too, because Dean was the sleeper of the two of them. Sam was a kind of natural morning person, and he tended to be awake, ready, and usually working long before Dean thought of swimming back to consciousness. At least he had been before he’d lost his soul and gotten it back again. In fact, Sam had been sleeping an awful lot lately, and later than usual, and had still not garnered any quips or sarcasm from his brother. It almost made him wonder if Lisa had had a lasting effect on his brother’s attitude. 

“‘Be fine, Sam. Just sleep. Okay?”

Sam nodded, but stubbornly stayed awake anyway until a motel came into view forty minutes later. Dean pulled up in front of the office and went in to get them a room, while Sam unfolded himself from the front seat and stood in the damp evening chill with his hands shoved in his pockets, trying to keep sleep at bay for just a few minutes longer by the sheer act of standing, but even the cutting breeze couldn’t dispel the tug and pull of exhaustion and he started to feel lightheaded, leaning against the Impala’s side, eyelids sliding closed. 

“Hey! Sam!” Dean had an arm across his chest and was tugging him back into an upright position. “Man, you need a bed…” He steadied Sam with one hand while he pulled out the bare necessities of what they needed for the night and slung them over his shoulder and locked the car. “This way, Sammy. Just a couple doors down.”

Sam trudged along, letting Dean keep hold of his coat sleeve like he was a little kid needing to be coaxed along. Dean unlocked the door and dropped their bags inside, tugging Sam over to the bed. Sam lifted his arms obediently for Dean to take off his coat and went over without a fight when Dean pushed him down on the pillows and slung his legs up so he could untie his boots.

“Shower…” Sam mumbled. 

“Uh-uh,” Dean grunted. “Little dirt never hurt anyone. They can burn the sheets if they think they have to. Now, roll over and go to sleep.”

Sam rolled to his stomach and squashed a pillow up under his cheek and let Dean wrestle the comforter out from under him and drape it up around his shoulders. 

“’Night, Sam.”

“’Night, Dean,” Sam mumbled into the pillow. He melted into the bed, not caring that there was a saggy spot under his right hip or that the pillow was nearly flat from too many years in service, sighing contentedly at the sheer pleasure of finally being horizontal.

Surprisingly, sleep did not come immediately, despite the nagging exhaustion and Sam’s inability to pry his eyes back open. He listened to Dean lock the door, re-situate their bags, shed his heavy coat, and finally sit down. Sam turned his head away from the light and waited for sleep to suck him down, thinking that maybe Dean had decided to hit the shower after all when he did not immediately climb into the adjacent bed. 

But the spray of water and thump-rattle of old hotel pipes never came.

Sam turned his head back and cracked an eyelid to the suffused glow of the lamp in the corner that Dean had left on. Dean was sitting at the table by the window, slouched back, knees splayed, just watching Sam. His face was cast in shadow by the angle of the lamplight and Sam couldn’t read his expression.

“Dean?” Sam lifted his head out of the pillow. “Go to bed, dude.”

“’S okay, Sammy. You sleep.” Dean leaned his head on his hand, but Sam could tell his eyes were still open.

Sam waited a couple of minutes to see if Dean would move, but when it was apparent he had no intention of it, he rolled completely onto his side and hooked one arm under his head so he could look back at his brother. 

“Still don’t trust me, do you?”

Dean straightened a little and shook his head, immediately so that Sam knew the denial was true. “No, Sam. It’s not about that. Not ‘bout that at all.”

Sam waited. “Then what is it, Dean? You stay up until I’m asleep, you’re awake before me, and you’re just…sitting there. Again. Waiting for me to drift off. So, what is it?”

Dean shifted forward, arms resting on his knees, face come out of the shadows so that Sam could see the salty glint in his eyes. 

“You didn’t sleep, Sam.”

Sam frowned. “Huh?”

Dean smiled, sad and sharp. “It was the first question Cas asked you, ‘did you sleep?’ You said, ‘no.’ You didn’t sleep. Not at all. Not anymore.”

“Huh.” Sam considered this. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been sleeping so much…trying to catch up.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Dean pushed up out of the chair and came to sit on the bed across from Sam. 

Sam watched him with eyes gone all soft and earnest. “Sooo…you watch me sleep now because…?”

Dean reached over and tugged at the comforter where it had slid away from Sam’s shoulder when he rolled over. “Because it reminds me it’s you in there.”

Sam sucked in a breath and bit his lip. He was too tired for this. Way too tired for this. He always got girly and emotional when he was pushed to his limits, and he wondered how Dean could say he missed that aspect of his soul, but somewhere inside him it warmed him that Dean was being so indulgent.

Dean’s fingers fiddled with the edge of the comforter, pulling it up close and kind of tucking it under Sam’s chin. Sam felt the fine hairs on the backs of Dean’s fingers brush his skin through a day’s worth of stubble. He tilted his chin closer to the contact without thinking.

It was Dean’s turn to suck in a breath. He paused in the motion of tucking the fabric around Sam and let his hand linger under his jaw, soaking up the warmth there. He moved his fingers, hesitantly at first until Sam jutted his chin forward like a puppy wanting to be petted. Dean felt an inaudible breath rush across his wrist. He turned his hand over and curved his fingers against Sam’s skin.

“Sleep, Sam. Just sleep,” Dean murmured, his voice all rough like coarse, crushed velvet.

Sam moved his head enough to press it into Dean’s hand and his chest rattled with the force of holding back a sob. He couldn’t remember if Dean had touched him like this while he was without his soul—he pretty much doubted it—and it had been a long time since he had before Sam jumped in that godforsaken hole in the ground in Detroit. There was too much distrust and betrayal between them then, but now…now Dean seemed bent on keeping Sam protected inside this little glass bubble, and while it was annoying that he kept trying to pry loose Sam’s slippery hold on the past year and get him to just let it go, it apparently came with some perks, too: like Dean’s suddenly bottomless patience, and girly cappuccino’s without any sarcastic comments, and…this.

Sam shuffled back across the bed, shivering a little as he left the warm spot he’d created behind and held up the comforter. Dean hesitated a fraction of a second, but it wasn’t out of reluctance, it was out of astonishment. After all that had passed between them, the anger, the insults, both of them acting like complete dicks and neither with valid reason; Sam still wanted him.

Dean toed off his boots and pulled his hand back long enough to shed his button down shirt and then climbed under the comforter with Sam facing him. He cupped Sam’s cheek again, rubbed his thumb across his cheekbone, eyes searching and memorizing, like he was afraid Sam might be yanked back at any time and he wanted to be able to remember this moment with perfect clarity. He leaned forward and kissed Sam’s forehead right between his brows. 

Sam couldn’t take it. He was too tired, too worn out, too hypersensitive to…everything. He dipped his head and hid his face against Dean’s collar bone. Dean kept one hand against his cheek and squirmed the other under Sam’s head so he could reach around and rub warm circles on his back. 

“It’s okay, Sammy. It’s okay,” Dean hushed him when the sobs started forcing their way through the cracks in hiccuping breathes and stuttering whimpers. “I got you.”

_I got you._ It was Dean’s mantra. Anytime Sam was sick, or scared, or hurt, that’s what Dean told him. ‘I got you.’ Like it could cure anything. Like Dean was the only shield Sam would ever need against anything the universe could throw at them. And even in the worst of times, when the world and everything else—even their own lives—seemed forfeit to powers they had no possibility of defeating; Dean came through. It was last minute, almost always. Dean’s pride and anger tripped him up so often and so completely, but Sam could forgive him— _had_ forgiven him—that so many times. 

_I got you, Sammy_. And he’d never failed him. 

Sam reached around Dean and pulled him close and then closer until Dean’s breath rushed out of him and Sam could feel his ribs fighting to expand against the pressure of his embrace. Dean returned the embrace, stroking Sam’s back and hair, planting a slow kiss to the top of his head. 

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean repeated softly. 

Sam gave his head a sharp shake. It wasn’t a denial exactly, more a preamble to so much that he wanted to say but that words didn’t have a needle’s chance of being found in a haystack of expressing. He just hugged Dean closer and smeared his tears across the soft fabric of Dean’s t-shirt eliciting a low rumbling chuckle from deep in Dean’s chest.

“Dude, I am not a hanky,” he admonished gently. This prompted a soft burst of a laugh from Sam that had the side effect of equalizing his erratic, sobby breathes. Dean brushed another kiss to the top of his head. “That’s it. That’s right, Sam. Just relax and sleep.”

Sam smiled damply and snuggled deeper in Dean’s arms. The fierce burst of emotion had cleaned out his insides and washed away the last of the twitchy need to move in his muscles, leaving him in a kind of euphoric daze. He floated on the surface of it for a minute or two before the downward spiral of sleep pulled at him. The last thing he remembered was Dean shifting a tiny bit closer and whispering warmly in the shell of his ear,

“Sweet dreams, Sammy.”


End file.
